A British man who plotted to kidnap, rape and eat children in his basement in Massachusetts has been jailed for almost 27 years. Geoffrey Portway, 40, a computer technician, pleaded guilty to soliciting the kidnapping of a child and to exchanging over 4,500 images of child pornography and cannibalism.

Officers who searched his home in the city of Worcester last summer discovered a steel cage, a steel table-top with restraints, butchering equipment and what prosecutors described as “a child-sized homemade coffin” in the basement.

They said he discussed confining and abusing children there in online conversations and that he had